Sympathy for the incel devil

The latest literary trend examines the disturbing, sometimes violent, movement of alienated males. Nick Duerden dives deep into it and finds something more human than expected

- Nick Duerden

Jamie Skelton doesn't get out much. Since dropping out of school three years ago with no qualifications, he sleeps through the days, rising at night to play video games. Jamie, who lives in Glasgow, has no friends. His only human interactions are with his mother, and with Lee, an online pal with whom he plays games and exchanges chat. The prospect of a girlfriend is unlikely, and not just because he hasn't left the house in months.

The outside world feels, to him, increasingly alienating, and so he stays indoors, subsisting on a diet of junk food. The future looks bleak. It is Lee who one day identifies what they are.

“Here, eh, by the way, I hink we’re incels,” he tells him in broad Glaswe�an.

Jamie has no idea what he is talking about. “Wit?”

“Incels. Involuntary celibates.”

Jamie remains none the wiser. “Yer gonnae have tae explain that tae me.”

The Oxford English dictionary defines an incel as a man who is involuntarily celibate: “a member of an online community of young men who consider themselves unable to attract women sexually” and who “are typically associated with views that are hostile towards women”.

There are some – but by no means all – incels who seem intent on exacting revenge on a world indifferent to their existence. In 2018, Alek Minassian drove a van into a crowd of pedestrians in Toronto, killing 10 and injuring 16, the majority of them women. Minutes before the attack, he posted on Facebook: “The Incel Rebellion has already begun! … All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!” calling back to another self-described incel who killed six people in 2014. After Minassian was found guilty, people from his community sprang to his defence; one commenter suggested that his act was “a middle finger to this hostile society”.